Tuesday, September 05, 2006

mis-titling an interaction design book

WE MAKE MONEY NOT ART: You edited "The Art of Experimental Interaction Design" in 2004. I've always been surprised by the fact that you chose to put two words like "art" and "design" together. I thought that the art and the design worlds didn't like to be mixed together. Did i miss something?

ANDY CAMERON: My idea was to try and cram as many buzzwords into the title as possible so that as many people as possible would buy it.

Of course it didn't work like that - artists were put off by the word design and designers were put of by the word art and everyone else was put off by the word interaction which apparently is so passé. I've never really felt that art and design are so far apart - this implies a romantic notion of what art is and especially what an artist is.

But the real reason for the title was a cunning marketing ploy and I can tell you it failed miserably.

The lines going through the title obscure its visual recognition and diminish its emotional impact.

A single strong graphic, or image collage, needs to convey the title.

This image should be prominent on the cover: a finger touching an interactive table fish, a person speaking into a voice recognition receptor, a finger clicking a mouse, fingers typing on a keyboard...or some poetic symbol that conveys the idea of interacting.